Queen of Quarantine (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep #4) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,32

to pay him back in kind.

I swept the blade across his throat, spraying an arc of blood out over the streets below and listening to him choke on it for several long seconds before shoving him out to die.

I didn't waste time watching him fall, turning back to Tatum and yanking the restraints off of her as Saint took the knife back from me and made the nurses get to their feet.

They were crying and begging but the coldness in Saint's gaze held no mercy for them. They had been a willing part of this. They’d been onboard with kidnapping Tatum, making her suffer, watching the sickness eat away at her strength bit by bit while stealing her blood until eventually it would have killed her. So fuck them.

“You still need me to fly this thing!” the pilot cried, clearly having seen the way this had gone.

"Shut the fuck up," Saint snapped, his words for all of them. "Or I'll throw you out of the door too."

They miraculously quit their petrified pleading just as I managed to pull Tatum into my arms, my throat tightening with the desire to rip this fucking gas mask off of me and lose myself in the taste of her lips.

"Nash," she murmured, her skin so pale it made my heart race and she sagged against me as I heaved her into my arms. “Where are Blake and Kyan?”

“They’re okay,” I promised her, hoping I wasn’t fucking lying because I had no real idea how that fight had gone back at the lab and the comms had been quiet since we’d parted company.

Tatum sighed in relief before her eyes fluttered shut and my heart leapt as I feared the worst, before she opened them again. She looked seriously weak, her skin pale and drawn and she started coughing as I held her, turning her face from me like she wanted to protect me beyond what the mask was doing. But this thing was the best money could buy and I wasn’t worried about that.

"What's wrong with her?" I bellowed, looking around at the nurses as Tatum seemed to struggle to even stay conscious.

"Swear you won't stab us and we will tell you everything," one of them begged, her eyes on the knife in Saint's hand.

"Done," he agreed without even glancing toward me and Tatum, his focus on the last remaining threats.

"Her body is struggling because we took a lot of blood from her. She's been exposed to a high level of the Hades Virus to force her to produce plenty of antibodies so that we could harvest them. That’s why she has symptoms, she’s been pushed beyond what her immunity can cope with all at once," the nurse choked out. The other one seemed to be too terrified to even speak.

"Harvest?" I snarled in disgust, pulling Tatum closer to my chest.

"What treatment does she require?" Saint demanded, ignoring me like he already knew exactly what the nurse meant by that and I bet he fucking did – the fucker had probably become a self-taught virologist in the time we’d spent hunting for her with all of his online courses and bullshit. Not that I was faulting him for it.

"M-mostly just rest, time to recuperate. She needs to replenish her blood levels and fight off the virus. She should make a full recovery though," the nurse said, almost smiling like she thought she was saving her ass by letting us know that Tatum had a good chance of getting better.

"So she has no desperate need of a medically trained nurse?" Saint confirmed and the dumb bitch actually shook her head.

"No. Just rest and lots of nourishing food and-"

Saint shoved the two of them so hard that they fell backwards out of the open door without even seeming to realise what had happened until it was too late. Their screams carried back to us as they fell to their deaths and I couldn't find it in me to feel a single molecule of guilt over them. They'd chosen to take part in this. They'd chosen to hurt our girl. Their morals were clearly beyond questionable and I didn’t even care if they’d been telling themselves that they were trying to save the world to justify her sacrifice. Because Tatum Rivers was worth more than the rest of the world in my opinion. Retribution was a bitch.

Saint cast one long look at Tatum as I tightened my hold on her, reaching out to smooth his fingers over her